Steering wheel at 1oclock

Does the truck pull right or left, or is the wheel just not straight?

 

Go to the shop let them evaluate that.

There is a old pretrip back in the days of old iron where when you are sitting still, in park, brakes set you try to move the steering wheel left and right, there should not be more than a certain number of degree of movement of the spokes. If it had too much move in it it failed the front end test and needs to have shop time before you take it out onto the road.

Now having to hold the wheel at 1, either you are on a high crowned Kansas road, fighting a wind load that requires you to hold a wheel off center to find straight or perhaps your load is shifted and you are trying to keep everything straight even as the rest of it continues to try to fall off your trailer.

I can say check the pretrips. But reality says people don't do PTI's so... look at the steer tire treads. Any cupping etc. Check the bolts. work your way towards the front end spring ends they should not be broken on any, not have brackets out of place or bolts missing. Your steering fluid lines should not be leaking. And assume there is fluid in your power steering. If you are running off fluid. Check it under the cap.

Anything bigger falls against your alingment which will find whatever the problem is anywhere in the front end. Your steering column is suspect as well. Your power steering pump may have had a fracture or a pending failure inside the box itself. And you might be in the early stages of that.

One steer tire might be low on air than the other. Ergo you steer against it or it will pull your rig off road.

Maybe your trailer started doglegging. So you add a foot this way to make it all straight. But you increasingly get mad. Then mad mad and then detonate.

 

Is there play in the steering wheel? Has it always been off center? I would take it to an allingment shop.

 

It's one thing I could never figure out in all the dozens of trucks I drove, none of them had a centered steering wheel.

 

I know you can pull off the steering wheel and re center it.

 

I agree with 77fib77 a alingment shop will be able to find it and then fix it.

Ive had spent sometime in alignment shops like the one out of Baltimore that did a good job on my cabover that was suffering from quite a bit of loose in steering. I think it was about 1500 dollars to get it straightened out. And it did really well. Made all the difference in the world as far we were concerned.

I actually am trained on alignment of the old manual rack pre-laser days on the older cars from the 60's and 70's which really would not be worth anything in today's alingment shops. I would have to go to school and get certified all over again and that would be a task of itself. We have a good shop here in Searcy that does a good job for the money they charge. Nothing too outrageous.

 

Thats because very few alignment techs will recenter the steering wheel after adjusting the front end.